Ball Lightning(66)

To gain their attention, and to win research funding, Colonel Xu decided to conduct an attack exercise using the chip-eaters we had already collected.

*

The exercise was conducted at the MBT 2005 test base, where Lin Yun and I had gone to learn about the feeler defense system. Now all was quiet here. Weeds grew in the vehicle tracks. All we could see were two MBT 2005s that had been brought here the day before for use as test targets.

Initially, only General Armaments Department personnel were supposed to watch the tests, but a notice sent two hours beforehand doubled the number of observers. Most of them were from the General Staff Department, and included a major general and a lieutenant general.

We first took them on a tour of the target area. Apart from the two tanks, the targets to be fired upon included several armored vehicles equipped with military electronic equipment. One vehicle held a frequency-hopping radio, another held a radar assembly, and a third held several hardened military-use computers. The computers were switched on, their screens displaying various images on screen saver mode. One additional target was an obsolete surface-to-air missile. The vehicles and equipment were set up in a line.

After showing them the target equipment, we specifically opened the electronic control portion to show them the unharmed chips on the circuit boards.

“Young man, are you telling us that your new weapon will completely destroy these ICs?” the lieutenant general asked.

“Yes, General. But the other parts will remain unharmed,” I answered.

“The ICs will be fried by lightning-produced induction, is that correct?” the major general asked. He was quite young, and evidently a technical officer.

I shook my head. “No. EM induction from ordinary lightning would be drastically weakened by the Faraday cage effect of the tank’s metallic exterior. Ball lightning will penetrate the armor and turn the chips to ash.”

The two generals glanced at each other and smiled, then shook their heads, clearly unconvinced.

Then Lin Yun and Colonel Xu brought us all to the firing site five hundred meters away and showed them the thunderball gun. It was installed on a truck that had once been used for transporting rockets.

The lieutenant general said, “I have a sixth sense about weapons. An immensely powerful weapon, regardless of what it looks like, will have an invisible edge to it. But I can’t see any edge to this thing.”

Colonel Xu said, “Sir, the first atomic bomb looked like a big iron barrel. You wouldn’t have seen any edge on it, either. Your sixth sense is only applicable to conventional weapons.”

The general said, “I hope so.”

Out of safety concerns, we erected a simple cover for the observers out of sandbags. When firing was about to commence, the visitors all filed behind it.

Ten minutes later, firing began. The thunderball gun was operated much like a conventional machine gun, with a trigger-like firing device and sight that were nearly identical to a machine gun’s. In the initial design, firing was carried out via computer, using a mouse to drag the crosshairs across the screen to lock on a target; the thunderball gun would automatically train the launcher on the target. But this required a complicated electro-mechanical system, and the thunderball weapon didn’t need to be aimed particularly precisely—that is, even with a certain amount of deviation, the ball lightning would still incinerate the target. So we decided to use a more primitive means of controlling this advanced weapon, partly because of tight time constraints, but also to make the weapon as streamlined and reliable as possible. Now it was operated by a sergeant, a distinguished marksman from the force.

First we heard a series of deafening crackles, a sound produced by the artificial lightning used for excitation at the head of the launcher, closely followed by the emergence of three lightning balls, glowing orange red. They flew off in the direction of a tank with a shrill whistle, spaced roughly five meters apart, and disappeared when they struck the target, as if melting into the tank. Then, from the tank, came the sound of three explosions, clear and sharp, as if the detonations had not been inside it but right next to our ears. Then the other targets were fired upon, two to five shots of ball lightning apiece. The crackle of the excitation arc, the whistle of the ball lightning, and then the explosion when they struck the target sounded in turn. In the target area five hundred meters away, two balls that had missed their targets or passed through without exploding drifted about....

When the last thunderball struck the surface-to-air missile, calm descended. The two misses floated above the target area for a while before disappearing silently in succession. One armored car was smoking, but the other targets sat there calmly, as if nothing at all had happened.

“What did those signal flares of yours do?” a colonel asked Lin Yun.

“You’ll find out!” she said, full of confidence.

Everyone exited the shelter and walked the five hundred meters to the target area. Although confident about the results we were about to witness, I couldn’t help but feel a little nervous at being surrounded by all of the senior officers who would decide the fate of the project. Ahead of us, the armored car was no longer smoking, but there was a crisp odor in the air that grew stronger the closer we got. One general asked what it was.

Lin Yun said, “Ozone, emitted in the ball lightning discharge explosion. It might replace the smell of gun smoke on the battlefield of the future, sir.”

Lin Yun and I brought them to the armored car first. The observers circled it, peering at it closely, evidently thinking they would find burn traces, but there was nothing to be found. The vehicle body was unchanged. When we opened the door, a few of them stuck their heads in for a look, but apart from a stronger smell of ozone, there was no trace of damage. The four military computers were still lined up inside the vehicle, but it would not have escaped notice that one thing was different: all of the screens were dark. We pulled one of the computers out onto the ground, and Lin Yun quickly opened up its dark green case. I held it up at an angle, and dumped out a white ash intermingled with a few black fragments from the interior. I held the case up high to let them all see the interior, and I heard gasps from the crowd.